Nineteen years old. The only time my body felt normal was when I moved. I’d practise dancing to Massive Attack, throw myself around in back-jarring ways, create routines for pre-tertiary Dance. During the day I bussed over the Derwent to attend Rosny College. I was repeating twelfth grade. In Hobart we called it Year Thirteen. I’d become sick on my first attempt while living with Dad, left Hobart before exams to see my mother in Byron Bay where she was staying in the campground of a backpackers’ hostel. Mum had always been restless, never stayed in one place for long, always up and left when the mood struck. Now she was near Cygnet about an hour from Hobart. Dad lived in the foothills of Mount Wellington, and my brother was in Melbourne.
I was renting a cheap bedsit in a four-storey apartment block. It was the first time I’d lived alone. My window overlooked the main road in North Hobart. The street was rough. I witnessed an argument between lovers that ended with the boyfriend running in front of a car. I found a man left for dead after being stabbed, blood gushing from his wounds. Some nights, the man next door slammed his girlfriend against the wall. Her body thumped until her cries stopped. Other nights, he meowed outside my door. I always froze while he was there, waiting for him to go, wondering if this time he’d break the door down.
I was aiming for university in Melbourne but my body and mind were against me. My hands trembled in class while I was sitting still. They bounced off the page as I wrote essays. I’d pin my right hand down with my left hand, but my words looked like those of a messy child. My emotions had taken hold of my body, supercharging my nerves like electrical currents were rushing through me.
Alone in the dark, I was plagued by my childhood. Mum leaving for Sydney when I was six, only days before Christmas, then returning ten months later and dragging us through a year with the Apostolic Church while she devoted herself to God. My parents’ arguments were explosive. Mum usually broke first, ended up wailing on the floor before it all calmed down. Sometimes it didn’t. I had flashes of Mum crawling across the floor crying for God to save her before screaming and racing towards the balcony, Dad wrenching her back. A flash of Mum hurling a mug at the kitchen window, shattering the glass. Flash after flash haunted me. Mum in a hospital bed after trying to hurt herself.
One afternoon, my second-grade teacher gave me news in class. My mother was sick. She’d gone away again. I would need to walk to my grandparents’ house. I developed a nose twitch that year. Every few seconds I felt pressure behind my nose that grew worse until I wriggled it. Funny to friends, painful to me.
I threw myself into school and friendships, dances classes and sport – everything to keep moving, some of that anxiety discharging through constant movement. I got used to my mother being different, moving every six to twelve months, sometimes returning before leaving again. But now, at nineteen, my memories were confused. Mum had come and gone in such a repetitive cycle that the timeline was out of whack. There were too many traumas: a jumbled mess of extreme events that I might never see clearly, that would separate me from normal people. Alone in the bedsit, after finishing assignments or practising dance, I absorbed myself in memories, the edges hidden from me.
I’d spoken with Mum about her nervous breakdowns, the arguments I witnessed. But my own memories were fractured. Painful fragments from the Burnie house we’d left when I was fourteen. As winter arrived, I shrunk into myself, kept everyone at a distance – even my best friend who was the first girl I’d fallen for. I saw her sometimes but we’d grown apart. She was at university with new friends. I saw Mum and Dad occasionally, but I no longer trusted either of them.
It felt better being outdoors, moving under the night sky. Most evenings, I walked three kilometres to the city where I sat at the docks. I’d stare at the black water, the yachts floating there, the Grand Chancellor lit up behind me. It was always late when everyone had gone and I felt my loneliness most acutely.
One night, as I passed Franklin Square, I saw an elderly woman sitting on a bench. She had long grey hair and a haunted appearance. I sat beside her and mentioned how cold it was. She agreed politely, glancing up. After a brief exchange I excused myself and walked home. Another night I saw the woman, Clare, again. We spoke more this time and I learnt about her past. She’d been a concert pianist. She’d emigrated from Europe and played in orchestras before her daughter was killed in a house fire. Clare could never live in a house again. Sometimes she played the piano in the Grand Chancellor’s foyer but she slept outside. I understood the need for the sky when undone by trauma; not the kind she’d experienced, but my own. I understood the loss of connection to normal life when the pain felt too strong. On my late-night walks between North Hobart and the wharf, she’d be there, on one bench or another, as constant as the night.
As my final exams approached, my English teacher handed me information about studying in Melbourne. She suggested I apply for the University of Melbourne. I completed my exams with shaky hands and submitted my applications. I moved in with Dad while awaiting the results. I continued to walk each day, this time taking the 10 kilometre road from the mountain to the city, sometimes sitting with Clare.
In the new year, I left Tasmania for Melbourne, beginning a journey on broken footing, hopeful about the future, with a body that needed to move.
Katherine Hills is an emerging writer with a Masters in Creative Writing. Her work-in-progress explores her dysfunctional Tasmanian childhood in the 80s and 90s, and how complex family trauma and repeated maternal abandonments shaped her young life and eventual disabilities. Restlessness gives voice to these themes during a year she lived alone while completing school.
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